|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
HUMANA CHALLENGE IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE CLINTON FOUNDATIONJanuary 23, 2015Matt KucharLA QUINTA, CALIFORNIA DOUG MILNE: Well, we will jump right in. Matt, thanks for everything you're doing today and thanks for your time, we appreciate it. 8‑under 64 today. Kind of keeping the momentum going certainly from Hawaii last week. Just a couple comments on what's really going so well for you these past couple weeks. MATT KUCHAR: It has been going well. It's been fun. I started striking it really well. I guess I had some work done with Chris O' Connell during Shark Shoot‑out and started kind of making some good little adjustments and felt like I was in pretty good control and had a couple weeks to work on it. Then came out here after Christmas, do my final tune‑up before the year starts at Kapalua. Been feeling good. Game feels solid. I feel like I know where it's going, feel like I'm hitting it in the center of the club face. I'm really pleased. Last week was an awesome week as far as striking the ball. This week, I felt yesterday I wasn't my sharpest and I guess maybe I had some high expectations after last week. How well I felt like I was hitting it. Then today, I got a little bit more in the groove and I hit a lot better shots, but thankfully my short game was really sharp yesterday and still was good today to be able to scramble on a couple par‑5's and make some up‑and‑downs for birdies. You get a handful of short irons out here and you got to take advantage and I've been doing a good job of taking advantage of the short iron holes. DOUG MILNE: Okay. Start with questions. Q. You got off to a fast start today, obviously. On a golf course that's giving up pretty low scores today for some reason. When you get off to a fast start like this, in this tournament, do you start thinking to yourself, where is this going to go, because you know the coarse are going to be low anyway? MATT KUCHAR: It's best not to think about it. You kind of need to keep it going. I think some guys go, well, I'm off to a good start and kind of ease back.  You need to keep going. I did a good job of actually not knowing exactly what I shot today. So, I did a nice job of just trying to continue plugging along and trying to make birdies. It was awfully good, I had just one just the one bogey on the card and I really felt like I had good shots on that hole, I came up just short ‑‑ I'm blanking on the hole. Maybe 6. Where it rolled back down the slope. So I hit a great drive and great approach that was just short of the green and trickled way down the false front and wasn't able to get up‑and‑down. But all in all it was a really steady good day of golf. Q. Nick Watney was just in and he says that it's a course where if you drive the ball well you're going to score well even though on the tee it kind of looks visually like maybe it's a little intimidating in places. Do you feel comfortable on that golf course as opposed to the other ones or do you just feel comfortable, you've had great weather here, by the way, so since you showed up. MATT KUCHAR:  We sure have. I think everybody is really enjoying their time here, this is what people move to Palm Springs for is weather like this. I've really enjoyed coming here, I spent a lot of time here and I think this is one of the reasons is the fantastic weather, the great golf that exists. But Nick's accurate, you drive the ball well, and there's some more demanding driving holes and then there's some forgiving holes, but if you're driving it well, you seem to find a lot of shorter irons and it's certainly there, if you can roll a few putts in and knock a few short irons close, the scores can be had. Q. Because of the nature of the this tournament you're a really consistent guy on TOUR, but you never know when you finish here and some guy may go out and just light it up right after you, so do you approach this tournament a little differently psychologically the first couple days, if you shoot great, but then somebody just catches on fire and just wait until Sunday, I mean it's a little different because of all the birdies that can get made? MATT KUCHAR: Nobody wins on Thursday, Friday or Saturday. We know, you know, through playing this game for years, that you don't really worry about what the other guys do. You know coming in you're going to need to make a lot of birdies. You know coming to the Bob Hope Humana Challenge that it's going to take a lot of birdies. So you do your best and you kind of don't worry about what guys do until late on Sunday. Not much you can do about guys going low, because they certainly are going to do that. Just for me I try to keep plugging along and making as many birdies as possible. Q. We didn't see the eagle, could you walk us through what you did there. MATT KUCHAR: I hit a driver, I had about 219 to the hole, I think it was, and I've got a 4‑iron hybrid club that I knew if I hit really well it would be perfect. And I did. And the nice thing about the club is that it's an uphill shot and that 4‑iron hybrid I can hit high in the air and was able to get it up in the air and land about on the front edge and it went about 12 feet past the hole and had a pretty almost dead straight down hill 12‑footer, all I had to do was gets it started on line and I did just that. Q. What is your approach to playing the tournaments in Hawaii and then coming here, because I know there are guys that don't like to do that or if they play in Hawaii they won't play here or vice versa? MATT KUCHAR: It's been nice with the format change to start on Thursday. That's a big help.  We used to have the four courses and Wednesday start. So you would red eye here, get in Monday and in a day and a half need to see you four courses, it was a big challenge to do. Now you have two and a half days to see three courses. So, it's much more manageable and for me I enjoy this part of the schedule. Q. Couple questions, have you ever shot 59 just‑‑ MATT KUCHAR: No, never have. Q. Have you ever come close? MATT KUCHAR: A pro‑am on the Nationwide Tour I think in Omaha. They blow a horn at five hours and you don't play anymore and I think I was on the final hole and just needed a birdie. But it was a pro‑am, so, they blew the horn and we went in. And if I think if I birdied the last it would have been a 59. Q. An unfortunate circumstance, obviously, but what does it feel like down the stretch? Do you feel different are you not thinking about it just kind of going about your business? MATT KUCHAR: Yeah, I mean I was engaged in the pro‑am kind of doing, fulfilling our duty to entertain, to be engaging with the amateurs and not really paying much attention to a score. I knew I made some birdies, but similar to today, I made some birdies and didn't know exactly how many until we blew the horn and realized I was one hole away and then one birdie away from a 59, but I'm guessing most people aren't thinking about it, maybe until the very end. But I don't know. I don't know. Q. I don't mean this to sound ridiculous, are you surprised that there aren't more 59s on the PGA TOUR, that there hasn't even been a 58? MATT KUCHAR: No. No. We're talking about golf, we're not talking about corn hole. You know, it's a difficult game. It's a very challenging game. 59, that's a lot under par. That is quite an amazing feat for anybody to shoot ‑‑ 8‑under is a really good round, to go 10‑under and to think you need to go 13‑under, that's hard to do. Q. You said you did a little work at the shoot‑out. Was there anything in particular that you were specifically focusing on there or were you just trying to sharpen everything? MATT KUCHAR: The same thing. My swing trying to get off the target line as quick as possible. Trying to make the swing as round as possible as circular as possible. And trying to release the club without rolling it over without any shaft rotation. And it started going really well. DOUG MILNE: Thank you, Matt, we appreciate your time and best of luck on the weekend. MATT KUCHAR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|